LuBian was quietly hacked in December 2020, losing Bitcoin now valued at $14.5B

Chinese mining pool LuBian was the victim of a massive theft in late December 2020, losing 127,426 BTC. At the time, those coins were worth about $3.5 billion. Today, they’d fetch roughly $14.5 billion, making this the biggest crypto heist ever recorded.

No one at LuBian, nor the group behind the intrusion, has publicly confirmed the breach. Blockchain investigator Arkham first revealed the scale of the loss.

BREAKING: ARKHAM UNCOVERS $3.5B HEIST – THE LARGEST EVER

LuBian was a Chinese mining pool with facilities in China & Iran. Based on analysis of on-chain data, it appears that 127,426 BTC was stolen from LuBian in December 2020, worth $3.5 billion at the time and now worth… pic.twitter.com/PnIOKgMt0i

— Arkham (@arkham) August 2, 2025

In mid-2020, LuBian ranked among the top pools, handling nearly 6% of Bitcoin’s total computing power as of May. Its operations spanned China and Iran.

On December 28, 2020, attackers emptied over 90 percent of LuBian’s holdings. The next day, roughly $6 million more which was split between Bitcoin and USDT, vanished from a Lubian address on the Omni protocol.

By December 31, LuBian shunted its remaining balance into secured recovery wallets. Soon after, each hacker’s address received an embedded OP\_RETURN note, begging for the return of stolen funds.

Sending those messages cost LuBian 1.4 BTC over 1,516 transactions, a sign the appeals likely came from the real pool operators and not a copycat looking to exploit compromised keys.

Security analysis points to a flaw in LuBian’s key-generation method. It seems their algorithm was weak against brute-force attacks, offering a gateway for the breach.

Despite the attack, LuBian managed to keep 11,886 BTC, today worth about $1.35 billion, which remains untouched. The hacker has also left the stolen coins, except for moving them into one wallet in July 2024.

Because Bitcoin’s price has climbed since 2020, the stolen coins now amount to $14.5 billion. On Arkham’s records, that stash places the culprit as the 13th-largest BTC holder, even ahead of the Mt. Gox hacker.

For perspective, Bitcoin’s elusive creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, mined over 22,000 blocks before disappearing in 2011. Those early rewards translate to more than one million BTC, all but a handful never spent, making Nakamoto a billionaire many times over.

LuBian hack surpasses Bybit’s $1.5 billion theft

LuBian’s loss shattered the previous record, set by Bybit in February 2025, when hackers stole $1.5 billion, according to Cryptopolitan.

About $1.46 billion worth of mETH and stETH streamed out to four Ethereum addresses, with parts swapped immediately on decentralized marketplaces.

On-chain sleuth ZachXBT spotted the suspicious outflow, and firm Cyvers flagged odd activity from the exchange’s wallets. Bybit had earlier confronted an unrelated “address poisoning” attack.

Most of the stolen tokens were swapped for ETH on decentralized exchanges and then run through mixers to hide them. It was one of the first big exchange hacks of 2025.

Bybit said the incident was a routine fund transfer between cold and hot wallets, but that hackers subverted the destination address. No internal breach of systems occurred, according to the company.

Investigators had pinpointed five wallets involved in the attack. ZachXBT warned that all other exchanges and services should blacklist these addresses to prevent further losses.

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